Guild Wars 2

I have been enjoying the new f5 from mortars quite alot! whats the best way to maximize damage that you guys have been able to figure out?

My normal build for WvW roaming usually includes tool kit/rifle/nades (or bombs) with the mortar kit and i usually set up the Oribital Strike by casting it near me then pulling with Magnet the enemy and net shotting them, they take the full 2 blasts(traited) and then i go hame with a barrage or big ol bomb/blunderbuss etc. pretty good combo, works extremely well if you time it right and use the Elixir U (which is great now since it has no drawbacks like it used too).

Traited mortar F5 into a napalm field is quite nice. If it’s untraited, the dmg is garbage. Sad – they didn’t learn nothing from removing the original grenadier trait :/

It looks cool but its good only as another blast

Agreed, without Siege Rounds it is just another blast. With Siege Rounds I think it’s good enough to slot into the DPS rotation.

Would be nice if they changed it to two blasts baseline, and Siege Rounds instead gave a big damage boost to it, or made it instant cast.

I’ve been running a aoe zerg build since the patch and it’s rly fun.
With kinetic battery, siege rounds and that “explosive above 50% Health” trait combined with sigil of fire you can put out nice amounts of aoe dmg.
Ofc I run full zerker gear. I’ve also tried kinetic battery with the rocket from rocket turret but its kinda hard to hit.

Adamantium.3682:

Agreed, without Siege Rounds it is just another blast. With Siege Rounds I think it’s good enough to slot into the DPS rotation.

exactly.

Taking out siege is good fun too! 1500 range with a large area, and solid power damage means a couple of engi’s can drop ACs fast.

The regular mortar shots are good too, sometimes tough to get the angle but pretty similar to the old nades.

As far as the “Perfect and maximized dps rotation at 25 stacks of might” goes, the traited orbital strike with static discharge does slightly less damage than the two grenade #1 throws you could do in the time of firing it off.

On the upside…

• It’s 1500 range and a good fight opener while running in.
• It’s unblockable (skill fact missing on tooltip, may be unintended).
• It’s two blast finishers.

It’s a nice might stack tool and decent damage in a dps rotation that does stacking in the midst of it. Orbital strike generally needs a 10% damage buff or so. Untraited it’s a woeful joke with no damage for an extensive cast time. Maybe have it be affected by explosion traits? Could be an option.

Tor.1365:

Taking out siege is good fun too! 1500 range with a large area, and solid power damage means a couple of engi’s can drop ACs fast.

The regular mortar shots are good too, sometimes tough to get the angle but pretty similar to the old nades.

Taking out siege makes it a blast finisher for might stacking, but not worth using in our rotation due the long cast time and missing vuln stacks you could have generated via nades in this time.

The regular mortar shots have the same dps as the grenade auto attack, wich is fairly low, but those at least stack tons of vuln, mokittenoesnt (only about 40% as much).

Mortar is used as a last resort 1500 range weapon and for it’s field + toolbelt. So traiting it or ignoring it is the deal. Sadly … I tought they’ve learned from the grenadier trait changes …

Sold Out.7625:

As far as the “Perfect and maximized dps rotation at 25 stacks of might” goes, the traited orbital strike with static discharge does slightly less damage than the two grenade #1 throws you could do in the time of firing it off.

Uhm .. no? Traited orbital strike deals 52% more damage than 2 grenade autos. You might have done some math mistakes there. It deals the same damage as throwing freeze and poison grenade though. But even without static discharge, since that’s a very unreliable source of dmg.

Xyonon.3987:

Tor.1365:

Taking out siege is good fun too! 1500 range with a large area, and solid power damage means a couple of engi’s can drop ACs fast.

The regular mortar shots are good too, sometimes tough to get the angle but pretty similar to the old nades.

Taking out siege makes it a blast finisher for might stacking, but not worth using in our rotation due the long cast time and missing vuln stacks you could have generated via nades in this time.

The regular mortar shots have the same dps as the grenade auto attack, wich is fairly low, but those at least stack tons of vuln, mokittenoesnt (only about 40% as much).

Mortar is used as a last resort 1500 range weapon and for it’s field + toolbelt. So traiting it or ignoring it is the deal. Sadly … I tought they’ve learned from the grenadier trait changes …

Sold Out.7625:

As far as the “Perfect and maximized dps rotation at 25 stacks of might” goes, the traited orbital strike with static discharge does slightly less damage than the two grenade #1 throws you could do in the time of firing it off.

Uhm .. no? Traited orbital strike deals 52% more damage than 2 grenade autos. You might have done some math mistakes there. It deals the same damage as throwing freeze and poison grenade though. But even without static discharge, since that’s a very unreliable source of dmg.

It has less vuln potential, less crit chances, has a very long aftercast that is not on the skill animation itself and generally is hard to combine with dodges. And yes, it has less damage than triple nade hits. There’s a reason the based entirely on pure and straight up maths with giant Spreadsheets formulas from DNT’s Brazil conclude that Orbital Strike is always a dps loss and should only be cast in downtimes if you want to do the most insane 20 seconds 17k dps combo possible in full upkeep. Nades have the advantage of enjoying the sweet sweet explosion trait line.

Edit: Here ya go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-k-BLJiBbA

Also, I still use orbital strike lots. I luv my might and other combo finishers and still decent damage. I could snuggle that laser lots and lots. And I find SD kinda reliable on the ground targets, as long as you have an enemy chosen during the cast.

There’s “less damage” and “less DPS,” The long cast time of Orbital is what makes it questionable to use it in the middle of a fight. Still nice if you can precast (I run 2-4 engi fractals a lot and loving it to precast on Archie before we hit a seal) and nice for the double blast, and the extended blind and chill fields on mortar can be quite nice as well.

I do question the design of Orbital though. The problem is, why in the world does Orbital have such a long cast time? It’s already delayed why can’t we activate it quickly? It wouldn’t suddenly make it some powerhouse ability. It’d still be incredibly hard to land in PVP but it would make it worthwhile in PVE during a fight. Just seems to me that there should only be one delay, either quick cast long delay on impact, or long cast with quick impact. And due to it’s bursty nature I think the quick cast would be the way to go. I’d like to see 1/4 cast time or honestly even instant, again the big light and all is plenty of warning for the PVP scene, and it’s pretty clunky currently in PVE outside of precasting.

For WvW Zerg Fight i like mortar more than grenades cause retaliation is not so hard

Sold Out.7625:

It has less vuln potential, less crit chances, has a very long aftercast that is not on the skill animation itself and generally is hard to combine with dodges. And yes, it has less damage than triple nade hits. There’s a reason the based entirely on pure and straight up maths with giant Spreadsheets formulas from DNT’s Brazil conclude that Orbital Strike is always a dps loss and should only be cast in downtimes if you want to do the most insane 20 seconds 17k dps combo possible in full upkeep. Nades have the advantage of enjoying the sweet sweet explosion trait line.

Edit: Here ya go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-k-BLJiBbA

Also, I still use orbital strike lots. I luv my might and other combo finishers and still decent damage. I could snuggle that laser lots and lots. And I find SD kinda reliable on the ground targets, as long as you have an enemy chosen during the cast.

DNT – another reason to not fall victim to the authority bias.

Orbital Strike has not less damage than triple nade hits. The whole animation of OS takes as long as 1.5~ grenade auto attacks, NOT MORE. OS deals pretty much exatly the double raw dps as grenades autos do in this time. So in the part of brazil using 6 grenade autos (wich btw could have been optimized if he’d start with nade 254 instead of 542 so sharpnel is rdy faster again), you can easily fill in an OS.

OS has less vuln potential, can’t argue with that but if his argument is the vuln stacks, he’d also not use blunderbuss or flame blast, because those two attacks are less of a dps increase compared to nades autos compared to OS. So the whole story of brazil doesn’t add up.

greez Ziggy

Xyonon.3987:

Sold Out.7625:

It has less vuln potential, less crit chances, has a very long aftercast that is not on the skill animation itself and generally is hard to combine with dodges. And yes, it has less damage than triple nade hits. There’s a reason the based entirely on pure and straight up maths with giant Spreadsheets formulas from DNT’s Brazil conclude that Orbital Strike is always a dps loss and should only be cast in downtimes if you want to do the most insane 20 seconds 17k dps combo possible in full upkeep. Nades have the advantage of enjoying the sweet sweet explosion trait line.

Edit: Here ya go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-k-BLJiBbA

Also, I still use orbital strike lots. I luv my might and other combo finishers and still decent damage. I could snuggle that laser lots and lots. And I find SD kinda reliable on the ground targets, as long as you have an enemy chosen during the cast.

DNT – another reason to not fall victim to the authority bias.

Orbital Strike has not less damage than triple nade hits. The whole animation of OS takes as long as 1.5~ grenade auto attacks, NOT MORE. OS deals pretty much exatly the double raw dps as grenades autos do in this time. So in the part of brazil using 6 grenade autos (wich btw could have been optimized if he’d start with nade 254 instead of 542 so sharpnel is rdy faster again), you can easily fill in an OS.

OS has less vuln potential, can’t argue with that but if his argument is the vuln stacks, he’d also not use blunderbuss or flame blast, because those two attacks are less of a dps increase compared to nades autos compared to OS. So the whole story of brazil doesn’t add up.

greez Ziggy

Yeah, have been thinking about it a lot recently too, and looked at the numbers. My rotation involves orbital strike right after the fire field to get 15 stacks of might out before the field is gone while doing the full dps rotation. I don’t even lose out anything to it, I still do 6 grenade throws and whatever.

Thing is, Brazil tries to make his maths for a realistic combo that everyone can do, I guess. Or he wants us to wait with using the orbital strike so we have less dps downtime after that insane starting 20 seconds.

But Brazil made some other errors. And I disagree on several spots.

• He thinks that the Static Discharge trait has a normal aftercast, even though it’s a skill queue-ing bug. So he writes the trait off as “worthless”, in particular because he’s unable to hit it, which I only have trouble with on the Flamethrower and elixir gun toolbelt, and only at range. You can screen-center bosses just fine.

• He claims that putting out more than double the vuln you usually do and keeping insane stacks of said condi on your enemy is a loss in dps with pugs (instead of just having 10% more crit chance in a melee), and…

• claims that your other pugs would not benefit from vulnerability due to their build. Even though there is literally no dungeon build that does not. Especially since the condi changes. This is in the same video where he suggests a vuln duration sigil. Wat? (For reference, check his comments on the engineer guide.)

• His maths just has some general issues. I doubt he’s factoring in aftercasts properly, because those are a huge thing on engies.

Not to forget having 2 minutes of swiftness to spare and not needing to kit swap and waste your kit refinement to get more swiftness in.

I’d very much like to do a metabattle build that slightly goes against his suggestions, but I dare say that his authority would have me overruled in no time. That ‘slightly’ being the vuln on crit trait instead of the 10% personal crit chance trait. And kinetic battery. And a connotation on how to use medkit if it really just serves you as a fury upkeep machine or kinetic battery heal.

5-6 autos in a row is too much autoing for an engi. brazil is prolly doin it wrong somehow or other. meh.

Sold Out.7625:

• He thinks that the Static Discharge trait has a normal aftercast, even though it’s a skill queue-ing bug. So he writes the trait off as “worthless”, in particular because he’s unable to hit it, which I only have trouble with on the Flamethrower and elixir gun toolbelt, and only at range. You can screen-center bosses just fine.

The queue bug is what makes it literally worthless. Try the following:

• do not trait static discharge
• do a simple might stacking rotation with the bomb kit: healing turret → big old bomb → fire bomb → acid bomb

Now you should have had no problems at all and everything went corret – nice!

Now try the same with static discharge enableded. After big old bomb, you will struggle placing the fire bomb if you are not spamming the button like 100 times :P Just try the whole rotation fast without spamming – it wont work.

Mesmers have the same problem with some traits that will cast a skill and interrupt the queue. It’s horrible T_T …

Yes. It’s a bug.

By the by, I can do that rotation with the bug too, but it just requires a lot more tense button spamming. That might be why my hand hurts regularly recently as if I had developed a new type of arthritis.

It’s important to note that Brazil is a multi-classer, and creates his guides catered to the average player that has only basic familiarity with what engineers do.

Screen-aiming is something that most veteran engineers do—not just for Static Discharge, but for skills like Throw Wrench and Flame Blast as well. But it’s not something most people are actually interested in doing when they pick up the class, and he’s going to recommend a build that gets the best results without strain in PvE; I mean really, think about it: an elementalist can just run staff and do slightly more damage just spamming Fire #2 and #5 off cooldown. That’s the community he’s working with, and he’s advertising a build that does near-maximum DPS without too many skill traps (which is hard to do with such a clunky class as ours).

And unlike PvP/WvW, you aren’t aptly rewarded for additional effort. Half the classes in this game just stand there and auto-attack most of the time. Warriors literally camp greatsword and get free 25 might out of it. The state of challenging content in PvE right now is hilariously undertuned, so he’s not going to push a build that people are going to get overwhelmed with and not bother, especially when thief and elementalist are so much easier to play while dishing out more damage.

So while on paper Static Discharge is a better option, in practice everyone makes mistakes with it, and no one is going to want to spend hours in a dungeon train playing with their camera. It’s not as easy as just tilting your camera like s/d elementalists do for the OOC Dragon’s Tooth, or d/d eles do for a shorter fiery rush (or whatever it’s called), so he’s going to go with what’s the path of least resistance.

Phineas Poe.3018:

So while on paper Static Discharge is a better option, in practice everyone makes mistakes with it, and no one is going to want to spend hours in a dungeon train playing with their camera. It’s not as easy as just tilting your camera like s/d elementalists do for the OOC Dragon’s Tooth, or d/d eles do for a shorter fiery rush (or whatever it’s called), so he’s going to go with what’s the path of least resistance.

To be fair it’s hard to miss in a stack and burn melee with an ice bow stun. Can’t wait for breakbars as a very minimum.

It’s also worth noting that the skill is unblockable. I know that is not a huge deal in PvE, but a nice benefit all the same.

You can even face completly at nowhere and hit the target if you just hug it stong enough :P

I tought Brazil is only the guy who makes the vids and tells everyone what the true class players in DNT tell him what the best “is”? I know he plays too ofc, but not all guides he has on his channel have been made all by himself, have they?

Xyonon.3987:

You can even face completly at nowhere and hit the target if you just hug it stong enough :P

I tought Brazil is only the guy who makes the vids and tells everyone what the true class players in DNT tell him what the best “is”? I know he plays too ofc, but not all guides he has on his channel have been made all by himself, have they?

As I understand it Dekeys does Ele and is the holder of the Great Spreadsheet they all run their maths through. Obal does Guard, Nike Warrior and Brazil and Nike dabble with the rest. I don’t think he claims to have things perfect, but it’s certainly a solid option.

I’m sure everyone here agrees you start with Shrapnel grenade not end with it in that cycle. Also should be starting with an Orbital more often than not regardless of the in combat damage because so many fights either activate or require running towards. I’m sure loving my 2 free blasts with like what 20k+ damage? Yeah not bad.

Either way I think he puts out guides not to say “this is the best option” but “here’s what you can do and here’s some math to back up why it’s solid” and there’s certainly enough little details where you change your approach on Engi that summing it up in a quick guide is impossible.

Personally I’ve been doing:
Incendiary Ammo → Orbital → Napalm → Flame Blast → Acid Bomb → Grenade Barrage → Jump Shot → Blunderbuss → Shrapnel Grenade → Poison Grenade → Flame Blast → Freeze Grenade → Grenade → Grenade → Grenade → Shrapnel Grenade → Grenade → Flame Blast → Acid Bomb

That’s about my standard start. Quick 15 might about 6-7s in, 12 right off the bat.

Curious if anyone has found something better?

Xyonon.3987:

I tought Brazil is only the guy who makes the vids and tells everyone what the true class players in DNT tell him what the best “is”? I know he plays too ofc, but not all guides he has on his channel have been made all by himself, have they?

No. He’s just one of several from DnT that create guides. Nike was actually the first to post a build for engineers from them.

Jerus.4350:

Xyonon.3987:

You can even face completly at nowhere and hit the target if you just hug it stong enough :P

I tought Brazil is only the guy who makes the vids and tells everyone what the true class players in DNT tell him what the best “is”? I know he plays too ofc, but not all guides he has on his channel have been made all by himself, have they?

As I understand it Dekeys does Ele and is the holder of the Great Spreadsheet they all run their maths through. Obal does Guard, Nike Warrior and Brazil and Nike dabble with the rest. I don’t think he claims to have things perfect, but it’s certainly a solid option.

I’m sure everyone here agrees you start with Shrapnel grenade not end with it in that cycle. Also should be starting with an Orbital more often than not regardless of the in combat damage because so many fights either activate or require running towards. I’m sure loving my 2 free blasts with like what 20k+ damage? Yeah not bad.

Either way I think he puts out guides not to say “this is the best option” but “here’s what you can do and here’s some math to back up why it’s solid” and there’s certainly enough little details where you change your approach on Engi that summing it up in a quick guide is impossible.

Personally I’ve been doing:
Incendiary Ammo -> Orbital -> Napalm -> Flame Blast -> Acid Bomb -> Grenade Barrage -> Jump Shot -> Blunderbuss -> Shrapnel Grenade -> Poison Grenade -> Flame Blast -> Freeze Grenade -> Grenade -> Grenade -> Grenade -> Shrapnel Grenade -> Grenade -> Flame Blast -> Acid Bomb

That’s about my standard start. Quick 15 might about 6-7s in, 12 right off the bat.

Curious if anyone has found something better?

I -definitely- suggest starting with the Grenade Barrage. Most engineers are used to not spamming it right off the bat because the cooldown used to be pretty huge, but the Tools line and baseline stuff changed that nowadays.

Then I of course suggest using the poison grenade before the shrapnel or Chill one, simply because you A) get a condi damage that has some time to tick, B ) proc another condi for your +2% damage per condi trait and C) You will have procced your bleed damage improvement from grenade barrage that way.

Really, Brazil’s optimal DPS rotation works entirely even if you Do Napalm + Grenade Barrage, then FT #4, then Orbital strike, and then the rest of his rotation. The timing will be a bit close but you can get both flame blasts off in the fire field and do 15 might in an optimal dps rotation that way.

So yeah, the guy isn’t perfect and does not always say things perfectly, but who in the world does? No point being elitist and ridiculously perfectionist about anything. Getting off the -entire- dps rotation without being interrupted, having to heal, block, dodge or anything takes a while.

A -possible- reason he suggests orbital strike to not be in the “ideal optimum dps” rotation is simply that if you use it from the start, you get -another- thing on cooldown and your down time is more limited in skills you can throw out. Whether that excuses him claiming it’s weaker than #1 is another story though.

Hmm, might be smart on the Poison before shrapnel, boost up shrapnel by 2% at the cost of 1s delayed which will just push it back a slot in the second iteration of the nade portion.

As for Barrage at the start, I’d just be slipping it in before the Flame Blast, but then I’d lose the timing to get the second blast in the fire field, worth it when I have outside might, not so sure when I don’t. The whole IA/Orbital/Napalm part is typically done as I wait for the boss to turn green in that scenario(ideally landing the Orbital the split second it turns red), when I have to run up yeah I can slip Barrage in before the orbital NP typically unless I’m traveling further than the range , then it’s the same situation, do I catch my blasts for might or do I go for the bigger damage?

So yeah, like I said so many on the fly decisions for Engi that tweak the rotation. Good point on the Poison Grenade though, I think I’ll have to make that change.

Jerus.4350:

Hmm, might be smart on the Poison before shrapnel, boost up shrapnel by 2% at the cost of 1s delayed which will just push it back a slot in the second iteration of the nade portion.

As for Barrage at the start, I’d just be slipping it in before the Flame Blast, but then I’d lose the timing to get the second blast in the fire field, worth it when I have outside might, not so sure when I don’t. The whole IA/Orbital/Napalm part is typically done as I wait for the boss to turn green in that scenario(ideally landing the Orbital the split second it turns red), when I have to run up yeah I can slip Barrage in before the orbital NP typically unless I’m traveling further than the range , then it’s the same situation, do I catch my blasts for might or do I go for the bigger damage?

So yeah, like I said so many on the fly decisions for Engi that tweak the rotation. Good point on the Poison Grenade though, I think I’ll have to make that change.

Nonono. You first do the grenade barrage, THEN you put down your fire field, THEN you do the orbital strike (You could also do strike first but with the skill queue bug that’s terribly tedious to do) and THEN you do the flame blast immediately. If you do it right, you get both flame blasts off in the fire field, and at the end of your big dps rotation, you have grenade barrage available again.

Like I said, different situations different rotation.

If I tossed my barrage first in the situation I was referring to it’d be hitting nothing >.<

So often you’re in a situation where things have a delayed activation or waiting on it to move into position (be it pulling, pathing, or just moving) such that you can precast your orbital/napalm and land it immediately upon the enemies being prepared.

You may be right that I should probably Barrage first but I find my Flame Blast often whiffing even with the fire field visually being there when I don’t start with the blast immediately, but I’ll keep experimenting.

Also I said screw it to S/D so no skill queue bug for me, yes it’s a DPS loss, but one that I feel is well worth it for QoL, god knows Engi doesn’t need more button mashing.

Different situations, different rotation – totally this. Against subject alpha, never start with barrage, since you can easy proc a second charge of the same toolbelt skill with those predictable dodges. Just a small example. Overall, it’s a very nice sentence Jerus just said.

Different situation, different rotaion. I like it.

It’s why Engi’s are so awesome. Not only do they have a very intricate and complicated max rotation, but the deviations from it are pretty intense as well. Even utilities is called for and the rotations change even more from there.